by B. C. CHASE
Zhang raised a skeptical brow, “And how could you prove that?”
Doctor Ming-Zhen sat back in his chair, “Antarctica.”
Zhang furrowed his thick eyebrows, “Antarctica? What relevance could that possibly have?”
Doctor Ming-Zhen explained, “Once, many years ago, I assisted a colleague at San Diego State University in documenting fossils from the Hell Creek formation. It covers parts of North America; Montana, North and South Dakota, and Wyoming. It is notoriously fertile.”
“Yes?”
“Hell Creek has yielded a treasure trove of all varieties of dinosaur fossils over the years. Tyrannosaurus, triceratops, and ankylosaurus, for example. You've heard of all of those, I assume?”
“Yes.”
Doctor Ming-Zhen said, “Well, the fossils my friend from San Diego State University and I cataloged were not dinosaurs at all.”
“No?”
“No.” The paper that resulted from their efforts was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, and quickly fell into obscurity. But Doctor Ming-Zhen never forgot it.
Thousands of representations of all kinds of animals were discovered at Hell Creek, including modern and extinct ones: all manner of amphibians, reptiles, fish, and birds (including many species still alive in modernity). Hell Creek also contained a wealth of plant specimens, ninety percent of which were angiosperms (flowering plants), a type supposedly in its evolutionary beginnings. In the words of one professor of paleontology, “If you've ever wondered why so many prehistoric animals are dated sixty-five to seventy-five million years ago, in the Cretaceous, it's because most of them were discovered in Hell Creek.”
Also found there were over 1,000 mammalian specimens, and it was precisely these which Doctor Ming-Zhen and his colleague documented.
Spreading his hands, Doctor Ming-Zhen asked, “You tell me, what was such an abundance of mammals doing in a place of history where they were allegedly in their infancy?”
“Weren't they all just little rats?”
“No,” Doctor Ming-Zhen said, “They weren't.” He cleared his throat, “There were primates. Tree-dwelling primates.”
Zhang leaned back with a look of surprise. He said, “You mean monkeys?” He blinked, “You cannot be serious.”
CDC
Doctor Compton sat at a large conference table in a room that was packed full of people, some seated, but most standing. The person at the head of the table was Karen Harigold.
Karen spoke, “So explain what's going on, Phil.”
Doctor Compton began, “Well, I don't know how much everyone here knows about viruses, I'm assuming you're all fairly well-versed. But just in case, let me explain. A virus is a core of DNA or RNA that's usually coated in protein. Very simple. So simple, it's not even classified as life.
“Now because they are so simple, viruses are parasitic. They must have a host to reproduce, in other words, viruses must infect living cells to reproduce. It is inside these cells that they replicate their DNA and produce new, infectious viruses.
“Now an interesting facet of this process is that more than one virus can replicate inside a single cell at the same time. When the virus replicates, transcription errors can produce mutations that can sometimes be beneficial to it, but it can also pick up genes from its host or from other viruses in the cell. So, what virus ends up being is an amalgamation of the genes that were useful, both from random mutations and from its hosts or even from other viruses it might have met inside its host.
“Viruses also pass pieces of their DNA into their hosts, which then can be passed on to successive generations. The fastest-replicating viruses are RNA viruses. Influenza is an RNA virus. Because it replicates, and therefore mutates, so quickly, it has transferred to different species very quickly.
“Now, to get to the point, you all know a mysterious virus killed a woman in Towson, Maryland, and we received samples for analysis. In fact, we now have the whole cadaver.”
Karen interrupted him, “And everyone needs to understand that, so far, the people in Maryland have refused to take this thing seriously. Unless the President adds this virus to a list for which we can quarantine, we are entirely at the mercy of the states for containment. Maryland has not reacted with the urgency they should, and that is why I've gone to the White House—to get quarantine authority in advance. Clear?”
Everyone nodded.
She said, “Go ahead, Phil.”
“Now this virus that we're dealing with here, it's an RNA virus, so the first thing we know is that it has the capacity to mutate very quickly. This means that the way she received it might not be the way it is transferred next time, if there is a next time—God forbid. As it mutates, it might attack other types of tissue.
“We tested the samples and couldn't find a match for any known virus. So we sent samples to some respected labs overseas.
“One of those labs happens to have compared the virus to a database of all known genes. And I mean all known genes from living and non-living creatures. If anyone found a snippet of DNA anywhere, in a bacterium, in a bone, in an insect...anything at all, this database has it.”
“Yes, it's called 'A.R.K.'. Any lab can freely access it online,” Karen said, impatient.
“Yes, that's right. Well, the lab that ran the test just called me.” Doctor Compton paused because he knew what he was about to say was going to raise questions. And doubts.
“Well what were their results, Phil?” Karen said.
“This virus is very old.”
“Okay???”
“I mean very, very old.”
“How old, Phil.”
“Ancient.”
“So is influenza...” she said. “Hippocrates wrote about it. What's the big deal?
“No, I mean before that... Many of the genes from this virus are only common with...”
Everyone was staring at him in expectation. He couldn't believe that all his study, all his hard work, all the companies he had worked for, his appointment to the CDC...everything had culminated in this: he had to say something preposterous. He finally let it out:
“Sauropods. This virus has genes matching sauropod DNA.”
A guy chewing gum and wearing a baseball cap said, “Sauropods? You mean stomp stomp 'Welcome to Jurassic Park' sauropods?”
“Sauropods, yes; dinosaurs.”
Karen immediately interjected, “But a virus can only be transmitted between living things.”
“That is correct—well, HIV could survive for weeks in a corpse, and, given the ideal conditions, some viruses could even survive for months outside a body... But, yes.”
“So whatever gave the virus to the woman must have been alive today.”
“Correct.”
Karen leaned forward, “What I'm trying to get at is, she couldn't have walked by a rock that a dinosaur happened to have touched eons ago and picked up a virus from that.”
“That is correct. A virus doesn't sit around for thousands...or millions of years waiting to infect someone. It needs a host. She probably had to have touched or been in close proximity to the original carrier of the virus.”
Karen looked at him with one brow raised. “Phil, really? Are you saying she touched a dinosaur?”
“What I mean is she would have had to touch something that was alive today and was carrying the virus. Not a dinosaur.”
Karen sat back. “Regardless, this sounds impossible.”
Doctor Compton nodded. “It certainly seems like it would be.” Suddenly, Doctor Compton's phone rang. He looked at the screen and recognized the number. He apologized, “I have to take this; it's St. Joseph's.”
He answered, feeling everyone watching him expectantly while he listened to the person on the other end. After he hung up, he said, “They say the pathologist's assistant at the hospital has the virus. It appears our worst fears are true: the virus has transmitted.”
There was a hushed silence in the room for a moment. Karen stood up, “Okay, I need
everyone to listen, and listen good. Starting now, we're in national health crisis mode. This is command central: every piece of information, every directive passes through this gate. First, I want quarantines. No one comes or goes from St. Joseph's until I say so. Send a team down there; call the police, whatever you need to do. And I want anyone who so much as looked at the original victim within the last week quarantined. This is an unprecedented situation, we are going to take unprecedented steps.
“Now I know you guys are used to doing research, but I want containment. I don't care if we never know how this thing got here as long as nobody else gets it. Flex your muscle first and ask if you had the authority later. There will be hell to pay if this becomes a nightmare on my watch. Am I clear?”
Everyone nodded, except for the ball-cap guy, who said, “But we don't know anything about it. We can't really label it a national health crisis until we have done research.”
Karen gave him such a severe look that he stopped chewing his gum. “I don't know who you are.”
He volunteered, “Guy Giordano.”
She rolled her eyes, “And I didn't want to know. But my name is Karen Harigold, I'm Secretary Health, and it's a national health crisis because I said it's a national health crisis. Got it?”
“Yeah,” the guy murmured.
“And, Doctor Compton?”
“Yes?”
“Call Fox News. Tell them about the St. Joe's quarantine. Anonymously.”
“Just as long as I don't end up with an espionage charge like James Rosen.”
“Very funny,” she said. “I hardly think you're on the top of the President's hit list...” Then she struck out for the door. “I'll be back ASAP.”
Doctor Compton asked, “Where are you going?”
She spun around and swore: “I'm going to the White House to get my quarantine order.”
St. Joseph's Medical Center
Sarah Rodriguez and Doctor Burwell sat across from one another at a desk in the quarantine area. They were talking over a meal of hospital food somebody had brought for them. Their first date, really, Doctor Burwell thought to himself. And they were both having a good time, until Sarah suddenly grimaced.
“What's wrong?” Doctor Burwell asked.
“My stomach. I don't think it likes these noodles.”
“You want some Pepto? I'll call for them to bring some over.”
“Thanks,” she managed to smile appreciatively.
Doctor Burwell picked up the phone and dialed four digits. “Hey, yeah. Can somebody send some—” Doctor Burwell stopped.
Sarah cried out, reaching for his arm, “John!”
She had never used his first name before. But now, she was squeezing him with a surprisingly warm hand and gasping in what appeared to be terrible pain.
Doctor Burwell yelled into the phone, “Send some people in here now!”
Sarah's swallowed eyes were rolling as her head dropped to her chest. Doctor Burwell rushed around the table to hold her up, but she slipped into unconsciousness. He wrapped both arms under her and lifted her up to carry her to a nearby bed.
Doctor Kingsley entered the area wearing a mask and gown, followed by a team of doctors. Doctor Burwell knew enough to stay out of their way as they flew into a blur of activity. Just as they were attaching the patches from the respiratory monitor, Sarah opened her eyes and cried out in agony, vomit gushing from her mouth and nose.
China Academy of Sciences
Doctor Ming-Zhen said, “Oh, they call them 'primitive' primates. But there's nothing primitive about them. They were primates in the strictest possible sense. They only call them primitive because they came before now. Just the same way we call society before ours 'primitive.'”
“Why haven't I ever heard about these primates of the cretaceous before?” Zhang asked, clearly bedeviled.
Doctor Ming-Zhen shrugged, “Everybody wants to hear about the dinosaurs, so we paleontologists don't talk about the other animals we dig up.”
“So you think this lends credence to your discovery of the man in the dinosaur stomach? I really don't think that's enough to—”
Doctor Ming-Zhen interrupted him, “There's more to it than that... Because the Hell Creek formation was originally dated to the Cretaceous, in the early 1900's, as more and more fossils of more and more different species were unearthed, it sent the evolutionary timeline back to the drawing board continuously.
“As species were added to the Cretaceous epoch, science was forced to depart from what I was taught in my early days in the field: the old textbooks explained matter-of-factly that the amphibians led to the reptiles (which then included dinosaurs) which led to the mammals and the birds.
“Now, the textbooks have a more convoluted version of history that varies from textbook to textbook but seems to usually claim a giant burst of life in the Cretaceous followed quickly by a mass extinction (somehow survived by many mammals).” Doctor Ming-Zhen leaned forward, “My question is now: was it possible that the variety of animals at Hell Creek represents not the population of an era, but rather the same type of species localization one would find in any modern environment?”
“I'm not sure I understand,” Zhang replied, shifting uncomfortably.
Doctor Ming-Zhen explained, “For example, a child can name the animals typically found in the savannah, and the same child can also tick off many of the animals usually found in the Congo. But the lists would always be different. Giraffes in the savannah, gorillas in the Congo. Different areas host different species.” He waited, allowing his superior to digest his statement.
“So you are saying that the Hell Creek formation could possibly be a representation of a specific environment hospitable to specific animals rather than an era, or a layer, of geologic time?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “To the east, in the Chicago area, mastodons, woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, and other large mammalian bones are found, but no dinosaurs. Not one. Not even a fragment of a dinosaur is found in that area. Why? Was it species localization? In California and in Florida the same list of mammalian bones have been dug up, but not a single dinosaur in Florida and very, very few in California. In Missouri and down to Texas, both dinosaurs and large mammals are found in abundance.
“So what if the cretaceous, and all the other epochs with it, did not exist at all? When you're looking at Hell Creek sediments, you don't say, 'Here are the mastodons on top (because there are no mastodons in Hell Creek formations) and here are the dinosaurs on the bottom.' If Hell Creek represents a swampy environment, which I suspect it does, then the mammals you find there are suitable to just such a place. Perhaps the simplest way to look at this is the right way to look at it: mastodons are not found in the Hell Creek areas because mastodons didn't like those environments.”
“But what if that area was covered in ice, during the ice age, so that's why the mastodons are not found there?”
“Visible Hell Creek is not a huge vast area: rather it appears bordering a vast area where very few fossils from anything except plants are found, the Fort Union Formation, supposedly formed during the Pleistocene, right after the Cretaceous. So let's assume that, during an ice age, ice was covering this huge Fort Union area as well as the surrounding Hell Creek areas, preventing mammoths from living there. How is it that the ice was there, but it wasn't covering Hot Springs, South Dakota, right nearby; Qu'Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan to the north; or New York to the west, all places where mammoths are found? That makes very little sense to me.
“And why are dinosaurs so scarce in California? Because it was covered in ocean back then and they were all washed away, as they say? How about because it wasn't swampy, the way dinosaurs like it?”
Zhang thought for a moment. Then he said, “But don't you usually dig very deeply for the dinosaur fossils, because they are from far back in history and therefore in a deep layer?”
“Another myth. That's how they draw things in fantastical school textbooks. But the truth is, when dinos
aur fossils are discovered, it is most often because they are exposed on the surface of the ground, not because they are dug up from deeply within it. In Hell Creek areas, the common method for finding fossils is by walking around looking for them, not by digging up vast mines. The same is true in the Gobi Desert here, the Sahara in Africa, and Patagonia in South America.”
Zhang said, “What about flowering plants, though? I thought pollen from flowering plants was only found in certain layers, so that proves that the layers were from certain periods of time. When it is present, pollen spreads everywhere on the wind. In other words, if flowering plants existed through all that time, then pollen would be found in all fossil formations?”
“Ah,” Doctor Ming-Zhen nodded knowingly. “The angiosperm argument. First of all, angiosperms are extremely fragile. Just pick one from the ground, you can see how fragile it is. And even though it's covered in a protective layer, pollen is still far more fragile than, well, bones. Studies have shown that it decomposes in soil within a matter of months. In water, it would be much faster. So when pollen is discovered within a formation, it is an extraordinary event. For example, even though scientists have deduced that angiosperms would have had to originate before the Triassic, only one sample of angiosperm pollen has ever been found in sediment from that layer (or so-called sediment from that layer). Only one.”
Zhang scratched his nose. Then he said, “All right, so your major proposal is that mastodons lived at the same time as dinosaurs, but that they lived in separate areas because of the environments in those places. What does that have to do with Antarctica?”
“If we accept that the mastodons lived with the dinosaurs, then this brings into question the existence of the 'ice ages;' the times in which the world was supposedly much colder and dominated by them and wooly mammoths. If mammoths were indeed contemporary with dinosaurs, could there be somewhere in the world where dinos have been quick-frozen in time, just as the notorious iced mammoths have been—the ones with fresh grass still in their mouths?”
